SO HURRY to your homes good folks, Lock doors and windows tight.
And pray for dawn. The Black Donnellys will be abroad tonight.
It was a bitterly cold night in Lucan town in the Canadian province of Ontario on February 4th, 1880. The vigilantes, armed with clubs and spades and axes and led by a policeman, Constable Carroll, converged on the Donnelly farmhouse at 1.14am.
The five people in the house were James Donnelly, 64 years old, his wife Johannah, their son Tom, a niece Bridget, just over from Ireland, and Johnny Connor, a neighbour’s son. Carroll arrested and handcuffed James and Tom. He gathered the family in the kitchen. Johnny Connor hid upstairs.
The mob beat the Donnellys to a pulp. They knocked James, Johannah and Bridget senseless. Tom Donnelly fought his way out of the house but his assailants stabbed him in the back with a pitchfork and clubbed him until his skull caved in. Then they burned the house down. Later, they shot and killed another Donnelly, John, outside his brother William’s house.
These gruesome murders were the culmination of a vicious 33-year-long feud during which the area around Lucan came to be known as the wildest spot in Canada.
In 1846, James and Johannah Donnelly had left their small farm in Tipperary and sailed for Ontario, where there was plenty of land to be got through government grants. It wasn’t rare for people to squat on land and make it their own if it hadn’t been worked for a while.
The Donnellys claimed squatters’ rights on 100 acres on the Roman Line Road, so named for the many Catholic families who lived in nearby Lucan.
The place had imported all the political and factional divisions of Ireland. The Orange Order was strong and so were the Whiteboys, an offshoot of the militant organisation founded in Ireland to retaliate against ruthless landlords. This made a fertile breeding ground for the mayhem that was to come.
The Donnellys had been working their farm for eight years when John Farrell leased it from its registered owner, a wealthy absentee landlord. The Donnellys took their case to court but the judge awarded Farrell 50 of the disputed 100 acres. Farrell built a farmhouse on his section.
In 1857 James Donnelly killed Farrell in a brawl. James was tried, found guilty and sentenced to hang, but his sentence was later commuted to seven years in prison.
There was a series of barn burnings in the area and a rash of petty crimes such as burglary and cattle rustling. Eyes looked askance at the Donnellys but there was no evidence against them.
In 1866, James came home from prison and the Donnelly boys began to strike out on their own. James Junior claimed squatter’s rights on a piece of land and set about building up his own farm. James Junior and William bought the McFee stage company, one of two coach lines that ran between Lucan and London in Ontario.
Six years after James moved onto his farm, history repeated itself and a man called Caswell bought the land from its previous owner. James took the case to court and lost. Caswell moved onto the farm.
Night riders burned his barn and farmhouse, cut his cows’ throats and disembowelled his horses. He rebuilt the house and barn but the riders burned them down again. Eventually he moved.
News of the feuding spread and the Donnellys were deemed the rogues. On London streets the kids skipped rope to the ditty: “How many miles to London town? Three score and ten, Sir./I’ve just come in by Donnelly coach. Then you’re as bad as them, Sir.”
The local merchants virtually boycotted the Donnellys in favour of the other line. This was owned by John Flannigan, who was originally from Co Clare.
One morning Flannigan arrived at his barn to find his two coaches sawn in half and his harnesses cut to pieces. His horses’ tongues had been cut out.
Men burned down the Donnelly stagecoach barn, destroyed two coaches and killed three horses. Eventually, William Donnelly went to jail for nine months. James gave up, sold the coach line and moved back to the farm.
On the night of March 17th, 1877, when John, Robert and Patrick Donnelly were working and living in London, riders came to the Donnelly farmhouse and torched it. Johannah brought her boys home and the Lucan skies blazed red.
In September 1879, a farmer Thompson’s cow went missing. Vigilantes searched the Donnelly farm for the missing cow but couldn’t find it.
They broke up the house a bit and moved on to William’s place but Johannah took a short cut and beat them to it. William was waiting for them on his porch, a gun beside him, playing a jig on his fiddle. The vigilantes went away.
James Donnelly died of pneumonia and a heart condition and was buried in the family plot in St Patrick’s graveyard in Lucan. Robert got two years in jail for shooting at a constable. Mike was stabbed in the back during a brawl and was buried beside his brother James. The Donnelly star was fading. Their winter had arrived and in the winter the vigilantes came and butchered them.
Johnny Connor escaped from the burning house that night. He identified 14 vigilantes to the police. Six of them, including Constable Carroll, stood trial and got off. At a dance in their honour, their admirers proclaimed them as “the redeemers of the community.” So ended the Donnelly saga. Legend has it that if you travel along the Roman Line at night, you may hear the otherworldly hooves of galloping horses and the yelps of night riders; they are the ghosts of the Black Donnellys.